Plan For Mars Plane Shot Down

An airplane designed locally for Mars exploration has been grounded -- again.

Scientists at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton learned Monday that their plane didn't make the cut for a Mars mission planned for 2011.

The decision by NASA officials in Washington comes about four years after the plane and its team at Langley fell short in a quest to join a different Mars mission.

"It's more disappointing today," the Langley team's leader, Joel Levine, said Monday, "because we understand the technology and engineering of flying in the atmosphere of Mars much better than we did."

The aircraft Levine and his team proposed, refined and then reproposed is called the ARES plane, short for Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey plane. Its goal has been to become the first plane to fly in outer space.

The craft's destination was to be about a half-mile to a mile above the Red Planet. After parachuting down in a protective shell, it would unfold its wings, then fly a programmed route within a designated region for an hour or two until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the planet.

Scientists had said that would be ample time to collect samples of the atmosphere and send back enough data to rewrite every textbook ever printed about Mars. The plane has been aimed at bridging the gap between satellites orbiting 250 miles over Mars and rovers rolling on the planet's surface.

Since 2003, the six-member ARES core group that Levine leads as principal investigator -- supplemented by other researchers from across the country -- has spent about $40 million on tests and updates that they hoped would allay any doubts about the technology of a folding, 385-pound airplane.

Four years ago, there were 29 proposals, and ARES was among the final four competing for a $325 million mission. This time, there were 26 proposals, according to NASA officials. Two made the first cut Monday. There is now $475 million at stake.

One of the proposals picked -- the MAVEN project, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission -- has a principal investigator from the University of Colorado. The other proposal is the "Great Escape" mission, with a principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Both projects selected in the first round plan to use orbiters to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere. Four years ago, the finalists were a more diverse group, Levine said.

He said the money that's gone into the ARES plane hasn't been a waste. His team learned a great deal about flying planes through the atmospheres of other planets, and that data is now available to scientists across the country. The knowledge gained also could help in flying remote-controlled planes used in warfare.

"This research has very interesting applications for national security and defense," Levine said. "Even though it looks like we're not going to fly this airplane in 2011, it's provided a very important database."